A
comment about parts suppliers for your car project – think
“outside the box.” That is, just because you're building
car doesn't mean you have to buy parts from specialty automotive
“boutique” parts venders. Some of the lowest priced parts
I found were from places like Home Depot, Digikey, McMaster Carr,
circle track parts venders, 4x4 off-road shops. Just keep it in the
back of your mind when confronted with buying an expensive part, it
might be much lower priced if you can find the same thing at a shop
that doesn't cater only to roadracers.

The
Overall Process

I
recently reviewed with a builder the order in which the project
should be designed, and I realized that list should be here. I
strongly suggest doing these steps in order. I learned some of these
the hard way. So, here it is, my suggested sequence of events: (a
work in progress....)

Decide
what you want it to
look like. Make a list of all the “must have” features. Ligher is
better for performance.

What are
you going to do with
it? Race, cruise, autocross? I didn't want to spend years making a
trailer queen, so it had to be street legal.

If a
street car, how are you
going to get it smogged? If you're in California you better look into
this NOW.

How many
seats will it have?
Where do you sit? Left, right, center?

Can you
afford it? I found
that I had to buy most of the parts up front, *before* design started,
because I couldn't find dimensions of the major components. That made
it very expensive up front, which was Not what I expected.

Do you
have room to build it?
How much time to you think it will take. I'll warn you now that setting
a goal... better called a deadline, can absolutely ruin the fun of it.
It has to be fun to build.

Where is
the body coming from?
From a kit car, composite, metal? If you want a custom composite shape,
where is the mold coming from? Are you making it?

Who's
going to design the car?
You? Good!

What
type of chassis will it
have? Tube frame? Composite? Monocoque?

Which
means around now you
should assemble a design library. Check out the link above, Books and
Catalogs. Expect to read, and reread them. This will take a good
portion of a year... no kidding. The good news is it's relatively
cheap... much cheaper than buying parts at this point.

What
engine will it use? Where
will the engine mount, front, mid, rear? If you use stock half-shafts,
realize the width of the car must be the same as the doner vehicle.

What
tires do you want? Tires
decide *everything*. If they're much different than the doner
drivetrain's, they will affect overall gear ratios. They also decide
ground clearance under the pan and CG height. Remember lighter is
better.

What
suspension uprights?
Stock or custom, struts or ? How will they mate to the half-shafts?

What
brake rotor and calipers
go with these uprights? Are they large enough for the expected
performance.

What
wheels fit over the
uprights and brakes? At this point you need to know what kingpin offset
will be acceptable, which will help you decide what offset to get.

Based on
the suspension
uprights, what type of suspension will be used? Rocker arm? Push or
pull rod? Straight axle?

Okay
then, time to start
sketching the chassis. Remember that safety is THE most important
thing. All through design you must constantly ask yourself, “what will
this do in an accident?”

Take
measurements of all major
components, including you. Draw it all out to scale, be it on computer
or by hand.

By now
you already know the
wheelbase, track, suspension type, and uprights which will be used.
Using whatever method you want, design the suspension.

Big tip,
the suspension
designs the chassis, not the other way around. Don't worry about not
having the chassis yet, just design the suspension, only making sure
the inner links don't go somewhere impossible, like inside the oilpan,
or in the middle of your knee. Expect this to take months.

Now
knowing the suspension
points, draw the chassis.

Build a
full size wood mockup.
Yes, full size. It's the only way to sort out all the interrelational
aspects of the major components, including the body shell. More months.

Designing
and building a car will truly enlighten you to the word
“compromise.” Sometimes it is the realization that
you can’t afford titanium wheels, sometimes it is the
indecisiveness of where to place the roll-centers. You have to play
an endless game of “give and take” in order to get the
thing built. If you don’t, you risk getting the dreaded
“Design paralysis: The inability to make any decision
whatsoever because of numerous conflicting issues.” This
can also lead to the belief that, when the car is done, one or more
of the following scenarios will occur:

Pushing it out of the garage for the very first time reveals
that in your excitement, you neglected to put in brake fluid.
This causes your car to coast down the driveway, across the street, and
into the neighbor’s yard -- the neighbor who is upset about the loud
banging sounds and blinding blue-white light coming from your garage
late at night.

Pushing it out of the garage for the very first time reveals
that you have the steering rack installed such that a right turn is
left. (This can actually happen.)

After getting it all done a friend casually says “You know,
for all that work and money, you should’ve just bought a used Viper,”
and you agree.

After spending months making the perfect design decisions,
people tell you how they would have done it, and you realize
their ideas are superior to yours.

After putting it into gear for the very first time and
popping the clutch, you realize your custom shift linkage cause Reverse
to be where First should be.

After doing all the calculations, including multiplying in
your safety factor, the very first pothole you hit causes a wheel to
break off.

At the first event you enter, you are squarely beaten by a
Honda Civic driven by a kid wearing baggy pants, crew cut, and backward
baseball hat.

You take your car to The Big Event. You notice some guy
looking at your car, shaking his head, and you realize it’s Carroll
Smith. He comes over and casually asks, “Is this
yours?” “Um, yes… sir.” He asks, “Why did you build
it this way, what were you thinking, and this, this here, it’s all
wrong, and that over there is in single shear. Didn’t you read any
of my books?”

In
spite of all this… I pressed on… besides, the odds of
meeting Carroll Smith must be really low…

If
I’m doing this only once in my life, it has to be worthwhile.
My interest is autocross and time-trials, so the list of requirements
went something like this:

Mid-engine, where God intended engines to be.

A two-seater (you have to share things like this.)

Composite skin with a tube frame chassis, for lightweight,
ease of assembly and repair.

Independent rising-rate suspension front and rear, rocker-arm
in the front.

A well balanced chassis, with as close to 50/50 weight
distribution as possible.

A Quaife limited-slip differential.

A12.7 second quarter mile, or better ( a completely arbitrary
number, but one I'd be very happy with.)

And to reach that goal, a maximum race weight of 1650lbs
including driver.

Radiator air exiting up out through the hood (coincidentally,
the only way of make it fit).

Smooth under-tray for some (hopefully) serious down force at
speed.

And finally, a real rear fin for track events, not some
"ricer" fin with nonexistent down force and drag data.

So
I started buying books and reading, and reading, and reading –
for a year. Part way into the research phase I came to an expensive
realization. The idea was to finance the project as time went on,
buying parts as money allowed. But since detailed component data was
sparse, how could it be designed? It meant parts had to be purchased
before the design even started, causing it to be very expensive up
front. But where was I to start? What was the single most important
component in the car? The engine - but which one?

Engine
selection:

The
engine search took quite a while, with some of the "drivetrain
contestants" being (in 1996):

Nissan SE-R.

Toyota supercharged MR-2.

VW VR6.

Honda B18.

Honda H22A1.

By
the time I reached my 180-200hp target, some of these contenders
would cost a lot to build up. It seemed like a waste; why not just
start with a larger engine to begin with? I had already had enough of
high-strung little engines with no torque (Datsun 1200). I wanted
something with some grunt, something that right out of the box would
be plenty fast. Something that, as someone said, could provide
"shameless smoky burnouts." On the other hand, weight was a
BIG issue, and it was very frustrating finding absolutely no
information on weights, so I ended up guessing. Yet another
requirement was the availability of a Quaife limited slip
differential. Using "hp/$" to cut down the choices, the VR6
looked good, but it failed the "Quaife requirement" and was
surely too heavy.

So... after much debate, the Honda H22A1 won
out. Fairly light (I thought), lots of power, and Honda reliability.
Back in 1996, they were hard to find... and when I finally found one,
I had trouble with the vendor. (Expensive lesson - get ALL the parts
you need up front.) So finally the big box arrived, and boy was it
HEAVY - a big disappointment!!! While my Fantasyland weight
estimate was 350lbs, reality slapped me with a 475lb lump.

I
would have chosen the GSR drivetrain today, but if I waited around
for the "perfect" drivetrain, I'd still be waiting. Life is
short and we can't sit around waiting forever, time to get on with
it. In fact lately I’ve been thinking that if I were
doing it all over again I’d use a 180hp Hayabusa sport bike
engine. With a 6-speed sequential gearbox, and a total weight
of 180lbs… nice…

Wheels
and tires:

Seemingly
a small detail, yet every other part of the car depends on these. The
wheel dictates brake size, axle centerline distance above ground, oil
pan clearance, and on and on. For the Mini, 13" was the
"correct" choice visually and it gave a nice ground
clearance under the pan. Another reason for small wheels and
tires is weight and rotational inertia, not something to be
ignored.
The difference between 13” and 18” wheels can be an
effective 20hp during acceleration. Think about what you’d
pay to get 20hp and you might reconsider buying those huge wheels.

My
choice may come back to bite me; applications for 13" tires are
drying up, along with manufactures’ interest. Everyone is
moving on to 15", if not 16", 17, or 18". Yet a Mini
with 18" wheels would make it look like it belongs at a tractor
pull competition... no thanks.

Shocks:

This
was an interesting component. Everything I read, and everyone I spoke
to, said the same thing, do NOT cut corners on shocks. In a car where
handling is the primary function, nothing makes more of a difference
than good (or bad) shocks. Shocks you buy for your family car cost
about $50 each, not so with shocks intended for real sports cars.
They are very expensive, ranging from roughly $300 - $1200
EACH!!! That's what it takes to make a car handle well. If it is
outside the budget, consider cutting expenses elsewhere else - shocks
are that important. So, going solely upon what people wiser than I
advised, I purchased Koni double adjustables.

Roll
center height:

Choosing
roll centers was a (self-imposed) difficult choice. On the one
hand most of the books talk about how important it is, but on the
other hand some people said it doesn’t really matter.
What to believe… If it’s high, the “lever
arm” between the RC and CG is small, resulting in little body
roll. Seems like a good thing, but it isn’t because it
results in high jacking forces in the corners. It also makes
tuning the chassis difficult because since the chassis doesn’t
roll, how can you adjust something that isn’t changing?
OTOH if the RC is low, the car tends to roll more, a bad thing…
but a good thing to since the suspension is now easy to tune.
Plus, there is little jacking forces. Now you see why people
spend months anguishing over such decisions.

One
of Carroll Smith’s books shows a diagram of a car sliced like a
loaf of bread, with the centroid located in each slice. The
centroid points are then connected with a line to form a “centroid
axis.” Between that drawing, and reading somewhere that I
should keep the centroid axis parallel to the roll center axis,
caused me to do just that. Since that time more than one person
has questioned that theory. They point out that the chassis is
(more or less) a rigid structure - there is no centroid axis, only a
single point at the CG through which all cornering forces are
applied. A chassis designer also pointed out that it all
depends on how the car is used. When I told him it would be
used for mostly track events, he said the RC height wouldn’t
matter that much; the car is so stiffly sprung that the RC won’t
move around much.

The
general rule of thumb is to make the RC higher at the end of the car
that has a higher CG (like the end with the engine in it.) And
conversely setting the RC lower at the end of the car with the lower
CG (like at the end with nothing but suspension in it.) The
funny thing about this rule is it tends to confirm Carroll Smith’s
drawing, yet I also see how his drawing (to me) doesn’t make
sense.

I
finally chose 1.5” front and 4.5” rear. Did I make
the right choices? Guess I’ll be the first to know…

Center
of gravity:

I
created a spreadsheet program to determine CG from the x and y
locations of every component. It ended up being 13” above
ground, with 40% front and 60% rear bias (with me in it.) I am
however continually trying to move weight forward to get it as
balanced as possible (for example placing the battery in the
passenger foot well.)

I’ve
never driven a mid-engine car before and look forward to it. My
brother once got a ride in a Porsche 911 at Laguna Seca raceway.
He said that while his modified Mazda RX-3 was faster in a straight
line, the braking ability of the Porsche was amazing. I’m
sure rear weight bias holds the back of the car down during braking,
allowing the rear brakes to do some serious work unlike typical FWD
cars.

Steering
rack:

It
was kind of funny how this turned out. I knew most kit cars use
a Triumph Spitfire or Dodge Omni steering rack. I learned the
Omni rack is for “front steer” cars, while the Triumph
rack is for “rear steer” cars, which is what I wanted.
“Whatever,” I thought; the chance of finding a Spitfire
in a wreaking yard these days in Southern California is about the
same as finding a blank sheet of paper at Steven King’s house.
So I combed the yards searching for a rack not knowing what I’d
find. A nuisance were the steering wheel locks (obviously none
of the cars had keys in them.) It meant I couldn’t turn
the wheel back and forth to calculate the speed, or pitch, of the
rack, that is, until I got a little “medieval.” Another
problem is that we’ve all gotten lazy, virtually nothing these
days has a manual rack in it, and if it does, it takes about 47 turns
lock to lock (okay, not that many, but you get the idea.) So
after several days I hadn’t found anything… until I came
around a corner and there it was, a 1976 Triumph Spitfire. Well
go figure, now I know why everyone uses them. Light weight,
fast ratio, $50 from the yard, what’s not to like, so I bought
it.

I
managed (with some trying) to design the rack in as-is, without
having to modify the length at all. The nice thing is if I ever
have to replace it I can just buy a stock part and it’s done.

Bump
Steer:

Using
the same “weenie-ware” suspension software I used for
roll center calculations (which constantly crashed,) I calculated
where the steering arms had to be. I know Mr. Bumpsteer
personally, having driven my sister’s MG Midget - what
were the designers thinking? In a nice constant curve you could
hit a bump and, with your hands never moving on the wheel, the car
would steer left, then right about three feet. No thanks.
So I went to a lot of trouble to try to have none of that -
preliminary measurements show none. We’ll see once the
steering arms are attached permanently… and I dive into that
first corner...

Front
suspension:

Double
A-arm, upper rocker arms, in-board shocks. Nissan 280ZX struts
were adapted since they are cheap and larger brake kits are available
if needed.

Rear
suspension:

Double
A-arm, though they are rotated to miss the drivetrain, essentially
acting as lateral and trailing links. There wasn’t much
choice besides this layout, other than using struts, but which
wouldn’t allow camber compensation. Rear uprights were
fabricated from scratch (consuming months.)

Fuel
cell:

Why
not use a cheap plain aluminum tank like the kit cars use?

NO!

Here’s
a story. I saw a video of a guy in a sprint car race where he
stopped for some reason and got rear ended. The thing was, the
impact was at about 5mph. That was just barely enough to crack
the gas tank, located in the rear of this car. The seam split,
spilling about 10 gallons of gas under his seat, around his feet, and
down onto the headers. He was in a blazing inferno for a long,
long, time; it just about made me ill to see. How long
can you hold your breath while burning alive? When they finally
dragged him out, he was not moving.

Then
and there I decided to use the best fuel cell I could find.

Drysump:

Still
unresolved. There are many reasons to not use one, as well as
many reasons to use one.

Bad
points:

Very expensive, about $3500 by the
time it’s done. For Honda’s, Petersonhas a complete system for the
B-series, and is developing an H-series system.

Need room for a large tank full of
heavy oil, plus hoses and pump.

Heavy, more stuff to leak or fail.

Good
points:

The best way to lower the engine as
much as possible (not an issue in my case since the oil pan has no
clearance problem.)

Eliminates the stock oil pump from
sucking air during high G-force maneuvers (very likely in my case…)

Dry
sump tanks used to be huge because the oils in use at the time had
trouble de-aerating. I’ve read that new oils like
Red-Line
are much better at de-aeration, so tanks can be made smaller.

Or…
I can just use an Accusump.
I’ve
been told by several people that these aren’t a perfect
solution. Perhaps, but at around $300 or so, they’re much
cheaper. Like I said, I haven’t made up my mind either
way.

Shifter:

The
H22 tranny has two levers, pushing or pulling one lever selects the
gear “column.” That is, it selects gears 1-2, 3-4,
or 5-Rev. Pushing or pulling the other lever selects the gear
“row.” That is, if the first lever has selected
gears 1-2, the second lever selects first gear or second gear.

Several
different approaches were considered for the shifter activation. The
obvious choice was to simply use the stock shift scheme.
Another was to use hydraulic actuation to eliminate mechanical cable
play. And finally an ambitious attempt to design a mechanical
sequential shifter was considered but shelved due to time
concerns.
Suspecting the hydraulic solution could be a time sink also, the
traditional cable shifter was chosen.

I
considered making my own shifter from scratch, but after looking at
the stock shifter in the Honda Service Manual I wondered why I was
trying to reinvent it. Honda's are known for their excellent shift
feel and a used assembly was only $65. I'd spend that much on
spherical bearings along, never mind my time - so I bought one.
Remember while the engine is now behind me, "forward" is
still forward; the shifter must remain in it's original orientation
so first gear is where it should be. But that meant he push-pull
cables would have to turn 180 deg where they exit the front of the
assembly. While the bearing and pivot assembly is excellent, the
overall assembly is heavy and over 12" tall! So after staring at
it for a long time, I decided to use the shaft, bearings, and
actuator in my own housing. The bearing assembly will be turned
around so it points to the rear of the car, the shifter cut off above
the top cable shaft, then the assembly turned upside-down, and
finally the shift lever will be welded back onto the main bearing
housing. This solves several problems at once; it saves weight, the
shortened shifter decreases the shift distance by about half, and is
now half as tall as the stock part. Most importantly, the shift
pattern is exactly the same - no bell-cranks or U-turns adding slop
in the linkage. The only unknown is the higher shift force, will it
be acceptable...

The
shifter turned out really, really nice.

Instruments:

I
used to race a Datsun 1200 which used VDO gauges. Long story
short, I wanted something better, so I chose Autometer
gauges this time. Since the
Mini can also be driven on the street, a speedometer was needed along
with a tach. I didn’t have much room on the dash for both
so I was looking for something “just right.”After
a long search, I came across just that, Spa
Techniquescombined
tach/speedo. For about $300 you get:

Stepper
motor drive for high accuracy and definition

Built-in
3-Stage programmable shift lights

External
shift light capability

Peak
recall

Low voltage warning

Speed

Odometer
(total miles traveled)

User
configurable trip odometer

Acceleration times (0-60 & SS 1/4
Mile

And
the Stack
ST700. Even better since it shows more sensor data, but it
wasn't out when I ordered my tach (or I didn't see it), but it's much
more expensive at about $750.

Exhaust:

As
delivered from Honda, the header is a 4-2-1 type, exiting the front
of the engine, going straight down, with the two intermediate tubes
turning rearward below the oil pan, and exiting to the rear of the
car. Since there was so much else to do, the exhaust issue sat
on the back burner a long time being ignored. Besides, there
were certainly reasons to leave it alone; simple, cheap, and “good
enough,” is plenty good enough to leave it alone.

But
as construction proceeded the exhaust became more of an issue due to
several conflicting sub-systems. Because of Honda’s
choice of putting the exhaust on the forward side of the block it put
the header square in the way of everything. (If Honda had the
exhaust at the rear of the block it would have made life much
easier.) Everything exiting the center tunnel would face the
header heat, and when I was designing the shifter I was finally
forced to make a final decision regarding the exhaust. There
were three choices of exhaust routing: under the pan and out the back
like the stock system, or out the right side, or left side, ahead of
the rear tire.

I
didn’t care for running the exhaust under the pan because it
would only serve to overheat the oil in the pan.

A
rant: A manufacturer of a Honda Prelude header recently had the
nerve to claim their header flowed so well, that it actually
lowered the engine’s oil temperature. That was the
biggest load of BS I’ve seen in a long time. Did using
their header make the oil temperature lower? Sure, because it
ran out the side of the car, and not under the oil pan. But
their claim is that isn’t why the oil ran cooler. What?
I get so tired of endless marketing bullshit. Apparently lies
are “business as usual” for many companies…

Since
I almost certainly will modify the pan anyway, the exhaust would be
in the way. Running the exhaust out the back, while the
quietest solution, would also move weight further toward the rear –
the last thing I needed with already 60% on the rear tires.
That option gone, I had to chose running it out the left or right
side. To driver’s left didn’t work well for several
reasons. While I don’t have an air-conditioning
compressor, I wanted the space open in case a dry-sump pump was
needed, and didn’t want to cook it. The alternator and
belt are right there too. And finally, I didn’t want the
exhaust making me deaf in my left ear. So I choose the
passenger side, exiting ahead of the rear tire because it minimizes
routing and heat, keeps the weight forward and to the right
(offsetting my weight,) and keeps the entire exhaust system a
reasonable length. This choice meant the exhaust runs at right
angles to all the tubes, cables, and wires coming out the tunnel from
the front of the car, minimizing heat exposure. Of course
running the exhaust out the side meant a full custom install.
It was an overwhelming temptation to make my own system anyway, and I
gave in.

I
did a lot of reading and research on header design. Two of the
best places are Burns
Stainless
and Headers
By Ed,
with both offering very reasonably priced header design services
which I took advantage of. The final design was an equal
length, 4-1, 32” header with 1.625” primaries and 2.5”
collector. Once the header was designed, another reason popped
up to not run the exhaust under the pan, the new collector would
simply not fit. As far as header material goes, I considered
what’s used by everyone else, and how often I plan on making
headers - once! I didn’t want it rusting away or
cracking, so with the advice of people who know, I choose 321
stainless. I bought the tubing and bends from Reid Washbon (no
website) in Newport Beach, CA (949-548-9783). I also found a
(comparatively) cheap source for 321 stainless, the aviation
industry. Sky
Dynamics
has the lowest prices I found for 321 stainless tubing; the only
drawback is it is only available in ¼” increments for
diameter. If their sizes fit your needs, great.

Note:
As a very sobering story, I offer up this tale of woe from a builder
of a sportbike-powered car who went through hell making his own. He
has far more patience than I... who would have thrown them across the
yard long before they ever got completed. I fear I may have severely
underestimated just how tough the job will be. We'll see... Headers
from hell

Muffler:

I
chose the SuperTrapp
unit. I’m well aware many people don’t care for
this muffler, but it certainly solves many problems at once.
Weight, tunability, size, stainless construction, plus it’s
rebuildable, how do I beat that? If it proves a poor choice,
the Walker
Dynomaxis
a very close second, though I don’t know how it would fit.

Seats:

These
were a tough item to spec. I saw lots of nice seats in
catalogs, with no way of sitting in them before I bought them.
What to do. The only place within driving distance was a Cobra
seat dealer. Went there, sat in them, and bought them. I
suspect there are better seats out there for the money, but if I
can’t sit in them first, then what? Yet another reason
why I envy the Brits. They seem to have a disproportionately
large sports car industry for the size of the country(!) and have
many seat manufacturers. Must be easy to check out seats there,
but shipping them here from England is expensive.

Chassis
Paint:

I
always assumed the frame would be powder coated. The reason is,
with a chassis of many tubes, it’s all but impossible to avoid
missing at least one side of a tube somewhere while spray painting
it. Because of how powder coating is applied, it tends to “go
around the backside” of a tube as it’s applied, making it
easy to completely cover a tube without having to spray it from all
directions. Plus, powder coating is extremely tough and good
looking. So why is there any question…

After
someone reminded me this is a one-off car, and that it’ll never
really be done, I started thinking about paint. Powder coating
is very difficult to remove and there’s a good chance I’ll
have to work on the chassis. How do I remove powder coat, or do
I consider some other type of paint? I don’t want to turn
the garage into a paint booth in order to spray. But what if I
use some high quality epoxy paint and brush it on? That has
several advantages as it’s far cleaner than spraying, it
cheaper than powder coat, and it’s easy to touch up. From
another point of view, the chassis will for the most part be
completely hidden. If there’s a paint run here or there,
it will never be seen. I haven’t made up my mind yet……
Regardless of the paint used, I’ll probably prep the chassis by
sandblasting.

Fuel
Lines:

Why
a separate section about this? It’s because some people
say they have trouble with braided-stainless fuel lines leaking.
One guy claimed they leaked like a sieve when pressurized (the V8 914
builder). Another said if fuel sits in them for just a few
days, it starts to dissolve the rubber. He used to run dyno
tests on race engines, and if they left race gas in the lines over
the weekend, it would be black when he drained them Monday morning
(but I’m using pump gas). Several people said I need to
use Teflon lines for fuel as nothing else will work.

I
have a hard time with this. What do car manufacturers use
because they don’t have problems. What type of fuel was
used when these problems happened? Will this happen when
unleaded automotive fuel is used? I’m bugged because I
already bought all the line, Earl’s Autoflex. What’s
odd is if “everyone” has trouble with this stuff, how is
it that Earl’s markets it as fuel line? And, they don’t
even make Teflon hose that’s really intended for fuel…
unless you count the stuff for F1 cars. All the “normal”
Teflon lines are very small diameter because they’re intended
for brake and clutch lines.

Since
I already have the stuff (read that as: nothing to loose) I’m
going to use it. It should give me several years to figure out
if it’s really that bad.

Rivets:

I was told by people who know that I should use structural rivets, not weenie hollow pop rivets from the local hardware store.
Unlike a pop rivet, a structural rivet retains a length of the mandrel when it "pops." The retained stem runs the full length of the
installed rivet, acting as an sheer pin in the assembly and making it extremely strong. Two common strutural rivets are the Cherry Q rivet
and the CherryMax rivet. Anyway, I went on my merry way having had the decision made for me and didn't give it much thought until it came
time to buy them years later.

They're expensive, very expensive when compared to solid rivets. But if your car has rivet holes drilled in the tubes there's no
other solution but to use blind fasteners. One possible compromise is to use less rivets and some kick-butt adhesive (which can be
expensive in itself.) But at the time I didn't think about that, other then planning to use silicon seal to prevent rattles, leaks,
and to keep dirt out from under the tubes. So I drilled many, many holes. It wasn't until years later I added them up... nearly
2500 holes!

It was a pain to find a place that actually stocked the size and type I wanted and they
were expensive. My advice is to research the size and type of rivet you want to use before starting
your build, to see if you can find them and what it'll cost. The following are places I found that carried (or claimed to carry), Cherry
Q, or CherryMax rivets. Be aware that, other then the first two, the pricing is all over the place. I found a span of $0.16 to $1.01
for exactly
the same part so
do your homework:

The
popular opinion on the street is that aftermarket lightweight crank
pulleys cause bearing failure.

So
what’s the stock rubber lined pulley for? One theory says it’s
to filter out the torque pulsations from individual cylinder’s
power strokes. That at certain rpm’s, the crank will
resonate (like a bell) and start vibrating, damaging bearings.
The rubber in the factory stock inertial dampener mechanically
filters out this resonance. The aftermarket part doesn’t
have this rubber ring, so can’t filter the pulses. The
other theory perpetuated by the aftermarket lightweight crank pulley
manufacturers is that the rubber is there only to filter out
the instantaneous crank speed variations from traveling through the
accessory belts, and the stock pulley filters out an unpleasant
noise. They say if the noise doesn’t bother you, there’s
6-10hp to be had by reducing the rotational inertia of the stock
unit.

Further muddying the watter is how a car with one if these pulleys installed is treated. People
who add these don’t baby their cars, and tend to be high-rpm drivers.
That in itself isn’t bad as long as they stay under red line.
But I wonder about instantaneous high-g loads, whether drag race
starts or high-g cornering causing oil starvation. If true, the
bearing damage could incorrectly be attributed to the crank
pulley.
The real question I have is, do these cars that are driven hard with
the stock pulley see the same type of bearing damage? No one
will say… The real test would be to find someone who
uses a dry-sump oil system and this pulley.

How
many of these stories are real; or are 99% of the ones, i.e. “these
things wreck engines,” just something that’s “heard
from a friend who heard it from a buddy’s uncle” and
passed on as fact? There is a huge volume of anecdotal stories
about this pulley and it’s hard to tell what’s real.
How about the people who say they installed the pulley and never had
any trouble (and have inspected their bearings to prove it?) If
they don’t have a problem, it starts shooting holes in
the entire theory about them being wrong by design.

Here’s
what AEM says:

“Vehicle
manufacturers have thoroughly investigated the use of torsional
vibration dampeners and conclude that their use significantly reduces
NVH (noise, vibration and harshness). Furthermore, manufacturer and
independent research shows that torsional vibration dampeners are
critical to engine life where long-term use is intended. Removing the
torsional vibration dampener from an engine can be highly detrimental
to its long-term operation!”

The
first part seems to agree with the aftermarket manufactures point of
them being just for noise control. And the last sentence seems
to indicate something in the engine will wear out faster, but
what?
So how much of this applies to me? I don’t really care
about NVH, and what do they mean by “long-term”
operation? I don’t expect to drive this much, so where
does that leave things… we’ll see. I’m still
looking into it, and have submitted questions regarding the pulley to
a drivetrain engineer. Why not ask the one person who knows
rather than the endless guessing about what’s going on. Here's his reply:

“I
talked to an engine builder who builds high performance V8s. He
occasionally builds engines without vibration dampers, but only for
hill climbing / sprinting. He recommends that the crank is replaced
after no more than 4 seasons racing due to the fact that it will
eventually fail. The overall milage covered is therefore very low
over 4 seasons.

I've
been checking out every other possible lead that I have and one of
the most interesting is the fact that <mfg name removed> will
use the production damper on the new V6 racing engine. The engine is
based around a production block and crank and will be used for
circuit racing. The milages will be higher than sprinting but not so
great. The engineers think that the damper can be improved slightly,
(probably reduced mass), but not deleted altogether. This is
interesting because with a 6 cylinder engine or multiples of 6 it is
possible to achieve perfect primary and secondary balance. The pulses
through the crank from each cylinder is what is clearly being damped
as you probably already knew by now.

A
failure related to the damper will result in a broken crank, possible
pressure plate etc rather than bearing damage. I think that any
failed bearings etc are as a result of general abuse and not down to
the vibration damper.

I
think that it is clear that any vehicle that will cover moderate
milages should have a vibration damper to prevent the risk of crank
failure.”

And on the otherside of the argument
is this from Unorthodox Racing's website: Scroll down to FAQ #4-6.
Regardless, cranks do flex, so there is an issue... After thinking it over I decided it's not worth the risk and I'm leaving my
stock pulley on.

Battery:

I
narrowed it down to several lightweight units. This link is very helpful. The exact unit
you need depends on your current requirements.

Both
Yuasa and Varley are carried byracing-stuff.com.
They
also have several small lightweight batteries intended for electric
cars and motorcycles.

Electrical
System:

Digikey
has just about anything electronic related (terminals, shrink
sleeving, LEDs, IC, everything!) McMaster
has more industrial-related supplies (everything!), which is where I
bought my toggle switches, they were cheaper. Wherever you buy toggle
switches, pay attention to the DC, not AC current rating, as there's
a big difference. It has to do with the arc which happens as the
switch is opened under load. AC, which reverses direction 60 times
per second, will always go to zero amps within 1/60th of a
second, so the arc always goes out. With DC, the arc can persist for
a very long time, burning the contacts very quickly. Switches made
specifically for DC usually have very fast switching time. If the
switch doesn't have a DC rating, don't buy it. What's a bit annoying
is that most catalogs don't show the DC rating. The only way around
that is to search out the manufacture's Web site and check the real
data sheet.

The
headlight, wiper, and brake switches are from Painless
Performance,and
I bought them through CarShop.
Painless has most everything for wiring a custom car... not exactly
cheap, but they do much of the hard work for you. Take this for what
it's worth, I'm an Electrical Engineer, yet I bought their wire
harness kit from them. Why? Because I know what a pain it is to
collect all the little bits to do it myself. Plus I didn't want to
search wrecking yards for an old corroded fuse panel which no doubt
wouldn't work or fit anyway.

For
the turn signal switch I'm just going to use a toggle switch with a
long handle, placed “just so.”